In the field of the sale and distribution of food products there is an ever increasing need of packing food soon after the same has been worked of handled to ensure that it is stored under the best possible conditions for an as long as possible time interval. This is especially true for sliced meat or salami which is usually subject to rapid oxidation and deterioration processes if left exposed to the air. A whole technical field has been developed to meet this problem, based particularly on the so-called “vacuum-packing”, i.e. packaging in an environment from which air has been sucked, and is thus greatly depleted of oxygen, delimited by either a rigid or a flexible plastic containers (pouches). Sliced food produce served at meat counters of stores is usually packed on the spot following a succession of steps each carried out at different locations some times relatively quite apart from one another, i.e. slicing the produce at a slicer, placing it into a pouch, weighting it at a scale, and transferring it onto a vacuum packing machine located elsewhere which, upon control, draws air from the pouch and seals it.
Quite apart from the obvious inconvenience caused to the operator who has to move from one part of the counter to another to complete a produce packing process, a significant amount of time is also wasted that could be better spent to serve promptly customers, while the sliced produce is exposed to the air for a longer time.